Friday, June 22, 2012

Occam's Mighty Razor

There’s an axiom that clings to the underside of the general
population, one meant to give hope to the hopeless, yet one whose hope is false
and laden with complexity. It goes “God made a big man, and God made a little
man, but Smith and Wesson made an equalizer.” While many would quibble with the
existence of a supreme being, none can argue the fact that a bullet is not
hindered by the size of its target. Still, as with many an adage , context is
everything.

David Occam was neither big or small. He was about average
in stature, but had spent much of his childhood tuning his body, making it far
more adept than it would seem by appearance alone. He was no body builder, nor
was he a sportsman. He was by no means a dummy either. David was smart enough
alright, smart enough to ace a few tests regardless of their subject matter;
enough that he was able to pass his classes and advance his grade in spite of
the fact that he’d spent most of his adolescence in the pursuit of a criminal
resume.

What David Occam was, in the main, was a bully. He was plenty tough enough to
succeed at his craft, forcing those he wished to commit illegal acts toward his
financial benefit. He’d beaten down more than one of the nastiest hoodlums
roaming the halls of Roosevelt High, which had given him the type of reputation
only a fool would ignore. But it wasn’t even his pugilistic prowess that made
anyone who’d known his name to fear him, but the fact that he’d always carried
with him a straight razor, and would often pull it from his pocket to leave his
mark of those that might question their fealty to his wishes.

In fact over time few paid attention to David at all. “Here
comes Occam’s Razor” people would say while retreating from his stride and
warning those still in his path. It was the razor they’d learned to fear
mostly, the whip of its opening, the shimmer of its blade, the whiz in it’s
movement and the tiny sliver of pain it caused when it set upon its victim the
tiny, almost imperceptible illustration that announced “Occam’s been here.”

For a year I’d avoided him and his brooding rage. I’d no
reputation and had given no impression one way or another as to my abilities on
the battle field. I was a transfer student, large, described by peers as “scary
lookin” and obviously wholly disinterested in the workings of the soap opera
called inner city education. I imagine he didn’t fear me particularly, but not
even a black bear will screw with a hornet’s nest if he thinks it might be
alive and ticking. In that, I was grateful; I didn’t want to get involved.

But then he made an error. I could easily have turned my
head through my entire tenure had he only chosen those that might defend
themselves as his marks. It’s not that I excuse behavior like his, but only
that I was not the school’s policeman, it was not my job, I had more than
enough drama to deal with, within my own three cubic feet of space.

We’d only called him Larry, the next canvas for the razor’s
stroke. I doubt even he knew his last name. He was what we called in the day,
mentally retarded; a six year old in a twenty year old body. I didn’t then nor
do I now know the name or names of his true maladies, and truth be told, I
don’t care. All I do know is that he was harmless, helpless, and happy as a
freshwater clam in a mudpuddle.

If there was ever a person I related to in high School, it
was Larry. He was alone, and just fine with that. He made his own excitement.
Larry saw circus animals in the sky, and knew all the six languages of the
squirrels. He could climb a tree branch and hang there, marveling in the way
the world looked upside down, and in fact then question as to whether what he
was seeing was actually right side up. Larry spent many an hour pushing kids on
a concrete playground merry go round, not to garner thanks, or even to share in
their fun, but because it seemed the right thing to do and it always made him
laugh; and laughing was Larry’s favorite pastime.

Larry had to pee one day, and he knew he should run home, or
so I learned from his mother at a later date, but he had to pee real bad and he
knew he couldn’t make it all the way home without going in his pants and he
remembered that it was bad to wet one’s pants because then it would require a
bath, and baths were most unpleasant. So he found a great big ash near the
manual carousel where he’d been working up a sweat making a dozen children
dizzy for laughs, and he ducked behind it, pulled down his pants and peed.

It wasn’t long before Larry wasn’t allowed to come to the
park anymore. Some child had been horrified and their parents were outraged and
the local authorities were burdened and the community tittered. But in the
interim some mean things were said about Larry, that were not only unnecessary,
but untrue; and some people thought it their business to set things right.

Why I’d been notified of the impending confrontation is
still a mystery to me. Perhaps someone had once seen me speaking to the man
child. I did fairly regularly have words with the kid, though they were as many
made up words as real ones as Larry understood that language as well as any
other. But for whatever reason I was called and told of a certain bully making
his way to Linden Hills park; one who’d intended to “make a mark on a stupid
perv.”

I didn’t confront him really. By his demeanor I have to
think he assumed I’d come to watch and take pleasure in his attack, as he
ignored me for the most part, to his folly in the end. I wish I hadn’t had to
wait until the razor had shown its twinkle before I stepped in, but I’m a
believer in the justice system, even if it is vigilante justice, so I needed
proof even though he deserved payment for so many victims.

One can buy pretty much anything one wants given enough cash
and connections. Guns are the perfect example, but I’d never wanted a gun in my
teen years. They were far too sexy, far too easily mistaken for a solvent, when
truly they were a glue unto themselves. Yet, I was enamored by one weapon, one
that would match my eccentricity, a defensive yin to my protective yang. And
truly there was no better weapon that I might have used than my taser against
he and his razor, as even then I was fond of Frost and Poe, and thought the
truly poetic justice of the encounter too fun to pass up.

I hit him square in the chest with both probes, and the
50,000 volts brought him off his feet and onto his back within a split second.
I yelled at Larry to run as I pulled the pins from their acquired skin mattress,
screaming at him in a howl I doubt he’d ever heard before, and would never want
to hear again. He took off for home like a rabbit on the mating trail, and once
I thought he was safely out of range I turned back to the object of my
reluctant attentions.

Once I’d seen Occam had recaptured his senses, I dropped one
knee into his solar plexus. I wanted to extend his knowledge of helplessness
while making myself a less likely target of instant revenge. And then as he
finally began to sputter his disapproval as to his treatment, I slipped my
fingers around his Adam’s apple and applied a light pressure.

I’d always seen my hands as a cruel celestial prank. A
really large man with short skinny fingers looks odd indeed. More than one joke
had been told concerning the size of my digits as a marker for the size and
shape of my jewelry. Yet here I found them perfectly suitable and almost an
inadvertent blessing. They slipped right into the cavity on either side of
Occam’s windpipe, without crushing it before I was able to make my speech.

I kept it short. My purpose was not to force David to
reconsider his entire lifestyle, nor to set up a future confrontation between
us. I had no desire to face off with the king of the hill in order to steal his
throne. Honestly, I wanted to vanish at that moment, pretend that previous two
minutes had never happened, disavow myself of Larry, the park, the
neighborhood, the city and even my life if that would stop the pounding in my
head. But I didn’t take those options seriously; I did what I had to do, and
explained to razor boy that if he were to ever come near my now invisible friend
again within either of our lifetimes, I would tear out what I held in my skinny
fingers and feed it to the crows.

Only a few people had witnessed the event, and I made it
clear by my snarl I wasn’t looking to make friends or develop hangers on. For
the rest of my time at the school, Occam was not to be seen. Perhaps he lay low
until I was no longer a threat, maybe he spent the time plying his trade at
another location. I did overhear once a group of people muttering about my
having picked up a nickname; the “bully buster”. Though I have to admit to a
grin upon first hearing, I didn’t encourage its use. It had a certain
implication; that I would do it again. I wouldn’t, unless the nearly exact same
circumstances slapped me in the face, and the odds against that were
astronomical.

I do believe in “an eye for an eye”, but not for revenge, or
pleasure or anything of the sort. But only to make clear to an eyeball
collector that there may be a price to pay for the pounds of flesh they choose
to steal, and that they may want to reconsider their choice of hobby. Still,
I’ve spent plenty of hours between now and then looking over my shoulder,
wasting what little time I have left to wonder when the razor, or another for
all it matters, will dart from the darkness and demand its due.